Areas of Research

  • Race & Ethnicity
  • Political Sociology
  • Social Stratification
  • Quantitative Methods
  • Demography
  • Identity and Identification

Dissertation

Creating Panethnicity: How Discrimination and Ethnonational Identity Affect Racialized Political Alignments (in progress)

Committee: Aaron Gullickson (Chair), Jiannbin Lee Shiao, Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, and Neil O’Brian (Political Science)

ABSTRACT: Panethnic and ethnonational attachment are two competing identities which may dictate political alignments. Various ethnonational groups are nested within a panethnic label, and each ethnonational group has a complex history in terms of their experiences of immigration and generational status. I ask the following research questions: How do experiences of racial discrimination, demographic characteristics, and ethnonational diversity affect panethnic identity formation? How does this panethnic identity formation ultimately affect political alignments? The diverse experiences of ethnonational groups affect how they incorporate into the United States and participate in politics. Panethnicity may matter for political behavior in some contexts or ways, particularly how panethnic groups, racialized others, and larger institutions view and interact with one another. I conduct a comparative, quantitative analysis of Latino/a and Asian American panethnicity through a U.S. context. I argue that panethnic and ethnonational attachment are two competing identities which may dictate political alignments and that there is an inherent tension between them. In this project, I examine publicly available data from the 2016 Collaborative Multi-racial Post-election Survey (CMPS 2016). My analytic approach includes OLS regression models, multinomial logit models, sensitivity tests, and multilevel analyses. I expand on the existing literature on panethnicity and political sociology by addressing how political behavior is a part of a racialized process in terms of identity formation and discrimination.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Capili, Christine M. 2024. “Multiraciality & Racialized Politics in the United States.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 31(4):1-23. doi: 10.1080/1070289X.2024.2373608.

ABSTRACT: In the United States, political ideology and political party affiliation provide important indicators of multiracial individuals’ place in the historic racial order. I ask the following research question: Do multiracials lean White or non-White in their political ideologies and political party affiliations? I argue that an individual’s racial identity shapes their political alignments, and multiracials’ alignments reveal how they affect racialized politics. I reference classic assimilation, minority trumping, and selection as theoretical frameworks that may indicate how multiracials are positioned in the contemporary racial order. Using the American National Election Time Series Studies (ANES 2008, 2012, and 2016), I conduct a quantitative analysis (i.e. OLS regression models and multinomial logit models) and examine the relationship between respondents’ multiracial self-identification and political ideology and political party affiliation. Multiracials, who identify as White and non-white, experience an in-between effect, compared to their monoracial counterparts.

*** MA Paper

Works Under Review and In Progress

Capili, Christine M. “An Interdisciplinary Approach in the Sociology of Race & Ethnicity” (in progress).

Capili, Christine M. “A Multilevel Analysis of Intersecting Race, Class, Gender, & Politics” (in progress).